Chris’s Cache highlights the erstwhile Chicago Symphony Orchestra @ Carnegie series with not one but two starry operas conducted by Georg Solti: Salome with Birgit Nilsson and a performance of Moses und Aron
Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot are, in their different ways, the final decadent flowering of a musical tradition at its twilight.
And what a luxury it is to experience this musically outstanding Parsifal with a cast of this caliber!
On this day in 2017, Clémentine Margaine made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Carmen.
With most of us dug in for the duration, there’s no better time to tuck into a CD box set of neglected treasures. Not that I needed an excuse, mind you.
In this recital, the Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny and his pianist Lech Napierala present the world premiere recording of Stanislaw Baranczak‘s Podróz Zimowa (Winter’s Journey), which weds the poet’s meticulously crafted poetry to the music of Franz Schubert.
Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco in a rare NYC concert performance with Margaret Price, Carlo Bergonzi and Sherrill Milnes.
Wagner’s Ring is an artistic masterpiece that is peerless in its ability to continually reveal layers of musical, theatrical, and philosophical insight
This Sony Classical set of live performances covers a golden quarter century in the singing and staging of Wagner. Birgit Nilsson shared it with many other legends, and many of them appear on these discs.
I wish to introduce our younger Parterrians to the magical Martha Mödl to commemorate the opening of the Bayreuther Festspiele which opens tomorrow afternoon.
This week’s feature is a classic Salzburger Festspiele performance from 1959 with the all-star cast of Leopold Simoneau, Lisa Della Casa, Kurt Böhme, Erika Köth, Walter Berry, Hans Hotter, Graziella Sciutti and Karl Dönch conducted by George Szell.
“Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love I shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams…”
There has been a conspicuous absence of chat on Parterre about this year’s Bayreuther Festspiele.
The cast of Wiener Staatsoper’s first-ever performance of Lulu in 1968 reads like a Who’s Who of then-contemporary Austro-German opera: the 28-year-old Anja Silja, Martha Mödl, Waldemar Kmentt, Hans Hotter, Hilde Konetzni, Manfred Jungwirth, Heinz Zednik, and Karl Böhm presiding over a production by Otto Schenk.
Myto’s transfer of Herbert von Karajan’s star-bedecked 1958 Die Walküre from La Scala gives collectors on a budget access to one of the legendary performances committed to tape.
Live recordings of Hans Knappertsbusch conducting Parsifal seem to proliferate like stairways in M.C. Escher prints.
I was once accused—by my own mother, mind you!—of having too many recordings of Verdi’s Aida. The blistering audacity of that recrimination did get me to thinking: How many recordings of Aida is too many? I mean, you’ve got the old classic you cut your teeth on. Then there’s he one where the tenor and…
The curious things about accepted wisdom is that sometimes it’s correct.
Was seht ihr in den Lust- und Trauerspielen?!Haustiere, die so wohlgesittet fühlen,An blasser Pflanzenkost ihr Mütchen kühlenUnd schwelgen in behaglichem Geplärr,Wie jene andern – unten im Parterre… La Cieca salutes the successful launch of Alex Ross‘s The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century with a podcast of one of her very favorite operas…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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